


I Call Upon The Youth Of The World.

by Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: 2018 Winter Olympics, Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Women's Hockey, F/F, Femslash, Gender or Sex Swap, Olympian Eric Bittle, Olympian Jack Zimmermann, Olympian Kent Parson, POV Eric Bittle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-15 05:08:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13606212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/pseuds/Lanna%20Michaels
Summary: Bitty has a silver medal and the rest of her life ahead of her.





	I Call Upon The Youth Of The World.

**Author's Note:**

> *Jedi mind trick* These are not the timeline problems you're looking for.

1.

Afterwards, Parse brings them all into a huddle and says, "we'll get them next time."

And Bitty says, "yes, Captain," and goes out and accepts her silver medal and forces herself to live in the moment and sear it into her memory and never think, _there's no next time_.

 

2.

The thing is, Bitty's spent years of her life playing hockey, doing everything she could to get better. And she plays hockey at a high level now, sure, but to stay at that high level, you have to keep playing. And Bitty can't keep doing that. 

Like everyone else, Bitty watched A League Of Their Own at a formative age. She learned a lot from it. She knows all about performing femininity to seem less threatening, and she also knows that you're never going to make a living playing women's sports. All you can really hope for is two weeks in the glorious spectacle that is the Winter Olympic Games. Well, she's gotten the glorious spectacle and she's got a silver medal and now the dream is over and she's going home.

Women's leagues pay shit money when they pay at all. Bitty's parents have always told her that if it doesn't pay, it's not a job, and if it pays badly, find a different job. Bitty's got enough friends stuck in dead-end jobs to put herself in one just because of the love of the game. Love of the game doesn't pay the rent or buy food. It doesn't pay the medical bills, either, when you destroy your body for the love of the game.

It wasn't love of the game that got her through college, that was a _scholarship_. And now she's got an internship waiting for her at home, and contacts in the foodie world, and a very popular youtube channel breathlessly awaiting her next video. There is no future in hockey for Erica Bittle. She can play on the weekends. She can play with her friends. But she can't make a living at it and so she can't spend her life on it.

She made it to the Olympics because she's great in college. But she's done with college after this semester. She's not going back to the Olympics, not as a player.

The team gets it. There's women like Parse, who are gritting their teeth and making it work in the CWHL or the NWHL and spending the quadrennium winning it all at Worlds. But then there's the ones like Bitty. The last hurrah. The only chance.

And they took their only chance and all they have to show for it is a silver medal.

And a silver medal isn't nothing. Objectively, a silver medal is _a lot_. Bitty's never one to say that the silver medalist is the first loser; it's disrespectful. If the only thing that matters is winning, then everyone else might as well not have shown up, if they're just going to be failures. There are a lot of ways to succeed that don't involve a gold medal. 

But... it's still not a gold medal.

And that hurts. Bitty doesn't like that it hurts, but it hurts. She's not the only one getting drunk at the party from trying to drown emotions rather than celebrate them.

Because fuck Jackie Zimmermann and fuck that golden goal. Erica Bittle didn't "come here to win" but that doesn't mean she didn't want it. A silver medal is a victory for her, after years of toiling and trying and doing everything she could to make the team, but it's still a failure for the American program. Because they could have won. And they didn't.

And Bitty had a shot at the gold and didn't get it. And now she has to go back to the rest of her life. And she's never going to be here again.

But don't be so worried about the future that you forget to enjoy the present, right?

 

3.

"You want to talk?" is the text awaiting Bitty the next morning through the hangover haze. The team has a ton of interviews lined up. The entire men's hockey tournament was a gigantic unholy shitshow, so the women's hockey team is the darling of the US media for now. But then again, it's not like it hasn't happened before. This seriously happens every single time women do well and there's nothing else around to bump it from the top. Bitty's watched the women's soccer team enough to know that it doesn't last. They love you. They won't pay you.

Bitty's life is nothing like the men's side. They can decide to fuck the Olympics and still go make millions every night. Bitty's side of things, they can blow up the Olympics, be the darlings of the Games, and go home to get paid shit or nothing at all. There's popular Olympic sports and then there are sports that are only popular at the Olympics, sports that inch along slowly, desperately clinging to all the money and marketing they get from two weeks every four years. Bitty knows which one she plays in. The Olympic circus might translate to more kids starting the game, but it doesn't mean they stay in it. It doesn't mean there's a path to success for them in it. It doesn't mean more money or larger audiences at home. Those two weeks are those two weeks. Trying to turn them into more is turning straw into gold, but that doesn't mean they don't still try to do it, every single time.

It's pointless and depressing and only people like Jackie Zimmermann care enough to try to make it their life. Bitty cannot make this her life. Jackie can. Her family's loaded, even though she never looks like it. Jackie's like the rest of them, except her dad was in the NHL and there's photos of her as a baby inside the Stanley Cup. Jackie's going back to play for Boston Pride again next year, and they've already agreed to move in together, so Bitty'll be coming home to her after getting home from America's Test Kitchen. The Samwell team alums are mostly staying in the area, too, so nothing from Samwell really has to _change_ even though Bitty won't be playing real hockey anymore.

Bitty doesn't know what to say to Jackie. Yeah, she wants to talk, but she isn't sure she should. But she's not going to leave Jackie hanging. Jackie's the type to tie herself in knots over it. Jackie won't enjoy winning as much as she should if she's concerned about Bitty in amongst that. And Bitty loves Jackie too much to let her own emotional mess bleed over and ruin this moment for Jackie. Jackie deserves this.

"After interviews," Bitty texts back, and adds a lot of smiling faces and a few emojis of champagne to let Jackie know there's no hard feelings.

Jackie sends back a thumbs-up and a microphone. Yeah. She's probably got even more interviews lined up than Bitty does.

"Love you, Captain Canada," Bitty sends back, and then puts her phone in her pocket and her media smile on her face. Time to face the music and dance.

 

4.

Parse comes to get Bitty for one last captainly pep talk before they go home and Parse's never Bitty's captain again. Parser brings donuts, because she understands sugar and how much Bitty misses her kitchen right now. Bitty is deeply, deeply grateful.

It had been a bit awkward with Parse in the beginning, but Bitty's a lesbian in a tiny sport; this is not the first time she's ever had to interact with a girlfriend's ex. And Parser is a good bro. She's weird about Jackie, but she's never tried to put Bitty in the middle. Bitty gets it. She doesn't know how long she'll last with Jackie, but if it ended the way Parse and Jackie did, she'd also still be a little weird about it even years later. 

And Parser's a good captain; Bitty's got an experienced eye for that now that she's a captain herself, even though college isn't precisely the national team. Parse cares and Parse tries. That more than makes up for how awkward it can be.

They'd post-mortemed the silver medal to death, so thankfully, they don't discuss it. Parser talks about her cat and how she's thinking of getting another one. Bitty is willing to become a cat person once she has an apartment that allows pets, but she thinks Jackie's a dog person. Still, pet care tips are better than repetitive recriminations about goal scoring, and Parse's cat is objectively adorable. It's exactly the morale booster Bitty needs it to be.

"Seriously," Parser says right before they're due to leave to go meet up with the rest of the team for pre-Closing drinks. "Cats. Totally get one. They're the best."

"I'll talk to Jackie," Bitty promises and goes off to get Olympically drunk with her Olympic teammates for one last Olympic time.

 

5.

Bitty is too drunk for her entire existence right now.

She's perched on Jackie's stupidly large shoulders so she can see over the crowd at the Closing Ceremonies, because Bitty is resigned to her existence as a pocket-sized lesbian and isn't above using her friends as ladders. As a women's hockey player actually allowed to compete at the Olympics, Bitty's already standing on the shoulders of giants. She's just living the metaphor by getting carried around by Jackie. Also, it's really the only way to see over the crowd. There are a lot of advantages to having a tall girlfriend and they don't all involve high shelves.

Bitty is femme as fuck and she can wield that exactly how much she likes, which right now is a lot. She's got lipstick _all over_ Jackie's collar. It's kinda really great. Jackie got the gold, but Bitty's got Jackie, and that's pretty cool, too.

Everyone's got their phones out and some even have, like, actual camcorders. Meanwhile Jackie's got both her arms securing Bitty's legs. She's such a great girlfriend. Bitty's gonna tweet that. Bitty gonna tweet everything. Bitty's gonna tweet, like, _the universe_.

@BittyBakes: thnk yo south korea!

@BittyBakes: so hapy the gf isn't the competition anymre!

"Oh yeah," shouts Parse from somewhere much too nearby, she must be, it's too loud to hear yourself think, let alone loud New Yorkers, "get it, Bittle!"

Bitty blows a kiss in what must be her general direction. "Will do, Cap!"

**Author's Note:**

> [this post on dreamwidth](https://lannamichaels.dreamwidth.org/996821.html); [this post on tumblr](https://lannamichaels.tumblr.com/post/170625562180/i-call-upon-the-youth-of-the-world-1749-words)


End file.
